They’re wrong about wild camping

Eben Muse

If you’re in Wales, and consume ‘Welsh’ media, you’ll have heard a lot of misinformation about so-called ‘wild camping’.

You might have seen terrible scenes of destruction and litter – carnage that moves even the most stone-hearted among us to anger and anguish.

You see them at roadsides, you see large groups of them arranged around busy walking spots in broad daylight.

You might feel anger and hurt, at the impact this behaviour is having on our most important cherished landscapes; you’d be right to feel all of that.

I’m here to tell you that this impression of wild camping is completely wrong.

Wild camping actually refers to the activity whereby a person, or a small number of people, camp discreetly, without paying, using their own judgement to choose a place that’s both suitable, and not disturbing of others’ enjoyment of the space.

In Scotland they even have a code for it; this intimate but discreet way of moving through and staying a night under the stars.

People have done this in Wales for centuries, in one form or other, and if you’ve tried it yourself, you’ll understand the unique appeal of spending a night in a place of your own choosing, carrying all you need on your back, or maybe on a bike.

It is definitely not illegal – it is not allowed without permission from a landowner, but it does not pass the threshold for a criminal act, and it has been historically tolerated across Britain.

On the other hand, if someone is causing harm or disturbance in the act of camping in the mountains, this is probably a criminal act – an act known as ‘fly’ (as in fly tipping) or ‘dirty’ camping.

No help is needed by hysterical reporters to make it so; there are laws that prohibit damaging land, wildlife, or property. It actually doesn’t do much to protect the environment to lump those engaging in responsible recreation with those causing criminal damage.

You wouldn’t lump joyriders in with someone doing their morning commute, nor would you be taken seriously if you did.

Indeed, the frenzy seen in the media’s coverage of this ‘scourge’ is enough to drive those reading into a sort of madness, a madness that metastasizes into calls for all sorts of grim medieval punishments for anybody who dares head out their front door with a tent in their pack.

Lets not forget wild camping was affirmed as a legitimate form of recreation by the highest court in the land only last year. If you don’t like it, tell it to the judge!

I can understand councillors, landowners, National Park Authorities, and even well-meaning news copywriters (let’s be charitable) who hold a desire to reduce the amount of fly camping taking place in their patch. I support that.

But what I’ve seen of late are small-time politicians across the UK and particularly in Wales, decide to take this on as a sort of opportunistic cause célèbre — for what is more useful to a cynical politician than something to be against?!

Take this week’s farcical offering, which has spread all over Wales’ local and national news; “Visitor levy could ‘fuel wild camping and camper vans all over the place’”.

According to councillors, the (possibly) incoming visitor levy is going to cause a flood of wild campers that will overwhelm the countryside.

A wild stampede of canvas-dwellers swarming over our hills. Got it.

Successes

For context, as part of my day job I’ve engaged with all aspects of consultation for the visitor levy, from open, face-to-face consultation discussions, to providing evidence to the scrutiny committee, to collecting responses for the main consultation survey.

Through this, I saw a lot of things. For instance, I witnessed several representatives of big caravan holiday parks froth, seethe, and raise their voices aggressively at consultation facilitators and angrily berating any participant who dared suggest the levy could yield some positive results if funds were used to improve visitor experiences and services.

I was also part of the successful lobby effort to reduce the cost of the levy for more bare-bones facilities such as campsites or hostels.

We were also successful in ensuring that young people were made exempt from paying the levy for that kind of accommodation.

Due to this, the financial impact of the levy on families seeking to go camping is relatively small, particularly compared the overall cost of a modern campsite which is often in the region of £16-25 per night, per head, unfortunately.

I’ve also been part of the team that conducted a survey (the largest of its type that I’m aware of) aiming to properly understand the motivations, experiences, and activities of those who go wild camping, so that the social case for (or against) it can be understood, and problem elements can be managed.

The resultant report is forthcoming, but we have hundreds of survey participants, who’ve opened up their hearts about the experiences they’ve had on camping trips in the hills. The confrontations and the weather they’ve weathered, the sunrises they’ve enjoyed, the birds, the foxes, the badgers, the human beings they had as company; they’re all in there.

Through this, it’s never been more clear to me that wild camping, which has been and always should be free, is an activity completely defined by its own merits.

It’s never been a cheap alternative to a conventional campsite with a block shower and a ping pong table, but because they want to go wild camping.

Scapegoats

For some who have never ventured to try it, money seems to be the only conceivable motivating factor for braving Welsh mountain weather at night time, but trust me, it’s true.

The motivations of fly campers are pretty similar – a desire to experience solitude, natural beauty, to escape the bustle of home or urban life – they simply lack the execution, the experience, the sense of belonging, that leads to good decisions.

A better and more interesting question than ‘how do we stop them?’ is ‘how do we help them?’.

So, what do those who created this story hope to achieve with such horseshit? It’s obvious; the very profitable commercial holiday-let industry doesn’t like the levy, is quite afraid of it, and wants to lobby public opinion against it.

But they know that simply saying ‘we’ll make less money!’ won’t cut it.

Hence, an ordained enemy, a bogeyman is needed, and our Welsh councillors seem all too happy to oblige.

Money matters in politics, and I promise you there is more of that in commercial holiday parks than there is in matey boy rocking a Vango in the Carneddau…

But that’s what wild camping has become in our media landscape: a convenient patsy.

Conflate the good with the bad, tar with a broad brush, and voilà ; you have a thousand scapegoats roaming the hills. A donkey on which to pin the many problems of the countryside. And to stop them, we must avoid this tourism levy!

When you spell it out like that it’s a profoundly dull premise, and unbeknownst to those dishing it out, all this scolding, the blame, the hysterics are pushing popular culture in a direction I don’t think they’re going to like.

Reactance theory: how not to get a job done

Justice

At an access forum last month I heard a National Park staff member say they couldn’t put ‘no camping’ signs up any longer because people keep stealing them.

I’m certain those signs now adorn the walls of people who probably started off wild camping as a way of connecting with nature, but who’s now motivated by something stronger; a sense of that they are being wronged.

Reactance theory is a well-established notion in psychology that posits that when individuals perceive that their freedoms are being restricted, they experience a motivational state aimed at reclaiming that freedom.

Think of a big red ‘do not touch’ button, or a sign that warns ‘do not walk on the grass’.

How do those make you feel? Any parent or teacher will know exactly what I’m talking about; there’s no more effective way of compelling the public and their tents to hit the hills than to engage in these absurd exaggerations and mischaracterisations.

An obvious case study of this cause and effect in action is the explosion of wild camping that occurred on Dartmoor where the comically villainous Darwalls took practically the whole country to court to strip their right to camp away from them. Among the many spurious grounds for doing so was the accusation of wildfire risk, which was promptly shown to be total baloney.

A sign that this process of cultural blowback is underway across the UK is the birth of a popular new genre of heavily ironic memes taking swings at a perceived authoritarianism inherent in the way wild camping is policed and in the way they are confronted.

 

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It’s so easy to portray the treatment that wild campers get as ridiculous and needlessly punitive, because it is. This meme went instantly viral and has more than 32k likes.

‘Cool’ is unicorn dust. Something that every marketing professional strives (and often fails) to summon, every business wants to buy.

But it seems that thanks to the pig-headed obstinacy of our click-frenzied media, an opportunistic breed of local politician, plus a compulsion to caricature an enemy against which any rural issue can be cleanly defined, wild camping is becoming very cool indeed.

 

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Another big hit is this meme, earning 38k likes, taking the piss out of a copper on a quad bike on his way to arrest some youths for ‘sleeping on a hill’. It’s pretty funny!

Notably it’s now a good business decision to flick V’s at anti wild camping bores and disciplinarians; it doesn’t really matter that wild camping is technically unlawful, not illegal, you can now get a ‘leave no trace/Illegal Camping’ hoody for a cool £54.

What we all know in our hearts is that sleeping on a hill isn’t really worthy of punishment. Not if you’re not harming anyone.

Outdoor educators shouldn’t have to pay off farmers or risk shouting matches on the moor. A quiet bivvy in a hidden cwm isn’t the same as a group of noisy teenagers having a fire and a party next to the road, but neither are worthy of being dragged across local news and broadsheet papers on a rotating cycle as they are.

Even if you do it ‘wrong’, it’s not worthy of a public shaming that does nothing to tackle the cause. In fact, we owe it to those who are doing it ‘wrong’ to define what ‘right’ is.

Where is the vision of our ideal, or even acceptable wild camper? It is conspicuously absent from the Countryside Code — a resource most of our National Parks currently signpost the public toward.

Other National Parks simply lie, stating that wild camping is a criminal offense. Our institutions aren’t upholding their side of the bargain (partly because the law doesn’t allow them to), and to expect things to simply improve through prohibition that can never be enforced is hopelessly naive.

No bones about it; this current state of affairs is a farce, and as long as it remains so it’ll keep achieving the exact opposite of what is intended.

More will join the masses on the canvas-dotted hillsides, more will wish to nick or vandalise prohibitive signage, more will join their voices for the call for wild camping to be treated as what it is: a valid form of outdoor recreation like any other. One you can do responsibly, OR irresponsibly.

(As ever, all views expressed in this opinion piece are my own, not those of my employer!)